A VERY NICE LITERARY AGENT INDULGES IN POLITE RANTS ABOUT QUERIES, WRITERS, AND THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A Good Title Is Hard To Find

STATUS: I finally finished the “out of the office for four days” catch up so I can concentrate on the projects on my To Do list. Yea!

What’s playing on the iPod right now? BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE by New Order

Some days it seems like we don’t get paid enough or maybe we get paid too much. You’ll never believe what Sara and I did this morning.

We brainstormed for possible titles for a client’s delivered novel. I kid you not. We spent a good hour, maybe more, cruising Amazon.com and looking up synonyms for the word “dark” (amongst other words).

Why? Because our client hates the title her publisher wants to name her new paranormal romance novel. And I don’t mean she “generally dislikes” the title they have chosen; she is in passionate disagreement. We were agent-bound to come to the rescue.

Title needs to be in by Friday so we got down to the nitty-gritty. Later today it occurred to me that my blog readers might benefit from the strategies we used. Maybe this will spark some good possibilities when naming your own work of art.

A good title often carries the day when we read queries. Just last week I asked for sample pages for a manuscript because I thought the title was so cool, I didn’t care what the blurb was. I’m not joking either. I saw the title, skimmed the blurb, asked for 30 pages.

So here’s what we did:

1. We begun by reading the back cover copy (which is actually quite good) that the publisher did for the novel. (You can use your own pitch blurb that you created for the work.) We listed on a piece of paper the key words that captured the essence of the story so we could play with them in different word combinations. This actually didn’t yield as much as we had hoped for in creating a new list of possible titles.

2. Then we brainstormed for authors who write similar stuff. In this case, we made a list of folks writing sexy paranormal romances.

3. This got the juices cooking when we looked on Amazon for what titles have already been done in the field. We made a new list of words that caught our attention, sounded cool, or whatever.

4. Then we played with combinations. At several points in this process, Sara and I were practically rolling on the floor in mirth. We came up with many stupid titles, let me tell you. It was really clear what didn’t work the minute we uttered it aloud (so maybe share you title choices with others before settling on one).

5. We also did a couple of out-of-the-box exercises by trying to come up with cool titles that at first glance don’t have anything to do with the main thrust of the story. (For example, I think Bantam was brilliant to come up with the title PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS for Sherry Thomas. In a subtle way, it exactly sums up the novel because the two main characters are having a big conflict over a private arrangement that both have agreed to undergo.)

It’s an out-of-the-box title though so you want to reach for things that might be odd but sound cool. Make a list of those choices and play with them as well. Another way to do that is simply to search through titles on Amazon that also stand out (even if the book is a different genre) just because they sound original or unusual. This helps the mind to focus on something other than the themes in front of you. We got stuck often on stuff like that when title brainstorming so that pushed us out of our thinking rut so we could explore some other possibilities.

Happy titling! Once the title is decided upon and with client permission, I can perhaps share more details.

About Me

A nice Midwesterner breaks free of her genteel upbringing and says what's on her mind--politely of course--some habits are really hard to break.
And one last thing, Pub Rants is shorthand for Publishing Rants. No Irish Pub involved--unless you want one to be!